It’s just one of 6,000 apps that New Zealand thinks might be best tamed with ERP
even more frighting?
they aren’t the only one.
it’s a god damned miracle capitalism hasn’t died in the last 40 years.
Probably should get a dedicated ERP system, mainly to just have official support.
But anybody in finance (like me) knows that everybody from low level accounting assistants, to CBOs use excel daily, even if they have an ERP system. For instance, the one I am using is complete shit with outrageous inexcusable ‘features’ (can’t even describe them because they sound made up). So we all just export data to excel so we can format the reports/data into an actual useful format.
Excel isn’t a problem unless all of it was done on one sheet and the only function used was sum()
Only those with no experience in corporate finance will find this surprising.
Excel is a powerful tool. The only ones who ridicule it are idiots who don’t understand anything.
Is it powerful? Yes
Is it fast when dealing with large volume of data? No
Are the “powerful” features intuitive to new users? Also no.
Source: I use Excel, Python, SQL for job
In fairness to the register they also ridicule moving to a dedicatdd ERP in the same article.
You’re r absolutely right there is nothing wrong with Excel. Its powerful software and ultimately it cones down to human and organisational processes about whether its being used to its best or not. You can also have the most expensive top end dedicated ERP in the world and still be a total mess. Similarly business used to run on pen and paper and could be highly efficient.
Software is just a tool, and organisation go wrong when they think it alone is the solution to their problems.
Also I doubt Health NZ overspend has anything whatsoever to do with excel. Instead it’ll be due to rising demand, and inflationary pressures on public finances. We have the exact problems here in the UK with the NHS just scaled up to a £182bn.
Excel is a powerful tool.
You typoed ‘popular’?
It’s not… Try to write a formula range which covers only lower half of the column which is typical setup in summing numbers( avoiding headers ), limits in columns and records, ever changing formats across versions… You asking for a disaster to happen which happens very often
Try to write a formula range which covers only lower half of the column which is typical setup in summing numbers( avoiding headers )
You can literally label ranges to use them as variables in Excel formulae, not to mention Excel Tables has more operations and features than you’ll ever need.
limits in columns and records
Unless you are working with an unfiltered, un-aggregated ledger dump straight out of your database (in which case you shouldn’t be let anywhere near an office computer), it’s rather hard to cross 1M+ rows and 16.4k columns in corporate finance.
ever changing formats across versions
The .xlsx format was introduced in 2007 (18 years ago) and hasn’t changed since. Not to mention you can still use all kinds of plaintext formats whenever you want.
Anybody who used ANY library to process xslx knows MS keeps changing it :-) About ranges… can you give me the range for whole columns minus 6 first records and 9 last records?
Anybody who used ANY library to process xslx knows MS keeps changing it :-)
I highly doubt that, also, people in corporate finance do not use libraries to process excel files.
About ranges… can you give me the range for whole columns minus 6 first records and 9 last records?
=OFFSET(first_cell, 7, COLUMNS(range_name), ROWS(range_name)-9-7)whererange_nameis the label given to the whole table andfirst_cellis its first cell.Would you like this in excel formula, VBA, or python?
It can be done in all. You’re only proving the other poster’s point. Excel isn’t necessarily the best option for tech literate people but given the tech illiteracy of many offices, it isn’t surprising they use excel for stuff like this.
Honestly, that’s fine. This may be a wild take, but they grew and their usage of excel obviously didn’t hold them back, what’s the issue?
The fact that excel lacks any sort of auditing or access controls. The fact that any corruption in the file could lead to the company not knowing what money goes where and who’s been paid and who owes them money.
Excel or not, they should be using backups.
It’s just one of 6,000 apps that New Zealand thinks might be best tamed with ERP
How does erotic role play help tame Excel?
For a non-joke answer. ERP in this context means Enterprise Resource Planning. It basically allows you to do everything an enterprise requires with one software system instead of using several different ones.
And they all suck ass
It’s because you’re supposed to customize them, not use as-is. We’ve had a lot of happy customers. Some send us gifts! But for the first year or maybe even couple of years, you probably pay more to your partner for implementation, customizations and advice than to the ERP developer for licensing.
ERPs aren’t for every company, different ERPs work best for different companies and different partners themselves have their own specializations. The one I work through (used to work for, but now I have my own company and just contract for them), does small to medium sized production companies. Think 5-200 employees usually. The ERP we work with is meant to cover every imaginable use case - which is why it doesn’t have enough depth. We add a bunch of stuff that isn’t there OOTB, sometimes remove things in default modules, etc.
But first you NEED an ERP partner to make the most of it. At ours the CEO is also the biggest salesman. He’s not afraid to tell you if he doesn’t think it’s a good fit. A bad partner will still try to sell you and that’s going to end up in disappointment for everyone.
Setting up an ERP can also be completely botched if the company’s representatives don’t fully grasp all the functions needed. What I’ve been going through as a customer of an ERP suite is that the “stars” of the software don’t actually understand the other 50% of functions outside their department. That remaining 50% is distributed among 4 other departments, so representation wasn’t exactly prioritized. Add in high turnover circa 2021 and the whole thing is logistical nightmare that finally at least has a goal in sight.
The other underlying issue is the existing forms usually lack what we need and have too much fluff. Once our ERP partner modifies it, the ERP developer drops all support for that form. We get zero help when it gets mystery glitches.
So yeah, I can get why some places say fuck it and stick with excel. Half the workforce knows excel well enough to write what they need. Take 10% of them to format and lock down spreadsheets so the other 50% of the workforce can just fill in boxes and pick drop downs. It just works.
All that to say, I both expect more form a Healthcare company but also am not surprised.
I would also like to know more.
It let’s your accounts blow off steam so they use excel better instead of filling the account ting sheets with dirty messages
Just goes to show that a spreadsheet is a very powerful tool.🤣
You could run empires on the back of a spreadsheet.
You absolutely shouldn’t, it’s nearly the worst option you have available, but you could.
It’s not the worst option available, it might not be the cleanest solution, but it does offer a level of flexibility if you have an in-depth understanding of key operational (or financial) business processes.
It’s better than just text files or word I guess
Shift+F9… annnnd, the data is gone
Not if there is a BACKUP folder with daily copies of all your spreadsheets.
Sifting through the backups is so much fun when you’re trying to find when a particular issue started.
My backup is ctrl+z 😎
Excel is indeed super powerful. I’ve seen firsthand what they power in multiple Fortune 500 companies, and usually for a lot of critical tasks. It doesn’t surprise me in the least that this company was using it for finances.
This is why I specified “nearly” the worst. It can absolutely get the job done and has basically every tool you’d need to do the job, but it’s pretty much the worst amongst the “this will do everything you need” options.
My thought process was abacus < pen & paper < text file < spreadsheet < database solutions
But a spreadsheet can function like a database. 🤣
That depends on spending articles, not on sum amount. Maybe their accounting is as simple as: 10bn income, 2bn to steal, 3 for salaries, 1 for medicaments and machinery, rest for advertisements.
You don’t need super-pooper software for that.
Even if their spending is that simple in terms of categories, it’s almost certain their breakdown within each category is definitely quite a bit more complex. Hell, my wife runs her own therapy practice with just herself and she talks about how obnoxious dealing with insurance is for billing all the time.
Yeah, it depends entirely on how many things you’re tracking and how many people need to access it. It’s probably not the right tool here, but sometimes it just is.
Using it to share data can be a nightmare, especially since different departments might look at that data in various ways and want their own formats. I work for a Fortune 500 company that, at least at my level of management, emailing around attached full spreadsheets of daily data rather than have a centralized database. I’ve fought it for years, but it’s what the higher ups want…stupid.
Even better when Microsoft puts out improvements like 365 and OneDrive that break certain functions, then depreciates Excel itself. God I hate the cloud.
